New York City's Little Island

Time for some island hopping. Coming up, a visit to that New York City classic, Coney Island. But to begin, Martha Teichner takes us to a tiny spot, making a very big splash. It looks like something a child might have imagined. A mirage of an island, floating above the Hudson River. Eccentric, over-the-top, fun. Leaving the city, going to Oz. Little Island is billionaire Barry Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg's $260 million present to the city of New York. Topped, not by a bow, but a man-made magic mountain. I kept saying, no, make it higher, make it higher. What I didn't realize is when you get up here and you look around, it's so glorious. Call it the pinnacle of Barry Diller's ambition. What I would say is, could we build something that could be kind of an icon for the city, an icon of New York? Just by looking at it instantly, everybody knows what it is. And that definitely has happened. That was the direction. Because of those things on top of the concrete pylons, referred to as tulips, 132 of them, all different shapes and sizes, holding Little Island up. Designed by British architect Thomas Heatherwick. This was an area where you could really see the height of the columns into the water. This is your favorite spot? Yeah. Van Furstenberg's favorite spot is the 687-seat amphitheater. What you feel when you're here is just gratefulness and gratitude and happiness, really. And judging from the reaction to a concert here, it's a joyful place to get over COVID confinement. If this is now, take a look at then, the old Pier 54 in its historic heyday. The ship carrying the survivors of the Titanic docked here. A few years later, the Lusitania began its doomed voyage from the very same spot. Superstorm Sandy in 2012 did in Pier 54. Like so much of Manhattan's west side waterfront, it was derelict and had been deteriorating for decades. The waterfront was really decrepit and the piers were crumbling. Michael Kimmelman is the architecture critic for the New York Times. The story of the west side became the story of Manhattan's reinvention. And the west side here came to be reinvented as a park, essentially. Before Little Island, DVF and BD, as they refer to each other, poured $40 million into the High Line, an abandoned elevated railroad a few blocks away that was turned into a park. So popular, it's been widely copied. Will they be building Little Islands all over the place? Yeah, I don't know that other people will because almost no public money was spent. You know, that's difficult to do in other cities. In his review, Michael Kimmelman, a fan of Little Island, raises the question, should billionaires be remaking public spaces? We can't just rely on rich people and their sense that they want to build something and where they decide to build it to build an equitable, fair, healthy city. That doesn't mean that this park, however, is not an asset for everyone in the city. We're lucky. We've got resources. So we could build something that was unexpected. Do we have the right to? No. But in fact, this was a torn down pier in which nothing but a flat space was gonna replace it. And visitors seem to like what they got instead. It's a gathering space for folks. That's what we need right now. I love it. I think I like the landscape of it and I like different levels. So up here, you can dance to the music down there. Diller and von Furstenberg have pledged another $120 million to maintain the park and pay for programming over the next 20 years. Why did the two of you decide to put your money on the west side of Manhattan as opposed to endowing a hospital wing or something like that? Well, I love public spaces. They're not curing a disease, but they allow civic life to be better. I see people walking across that bridge in huge numbers and it makes them really happy. And all they do is smile. At dusk, the amphitheater fills up. Maybe the most photogenic spot on a camera-ready island. The nightly show is the sunset over the Hudson. Here on Little Island, a place to look and laugh and kiss until the sun is gone. And then just turn around and watch the moon rise over the city.